CLASSIFICATION: REPAINT
BASE FIGURE: FOOT SOLDIER
MATERIALS USED: ACRYLIC PAINTS
FIRST APPEARANCE: "TURTLE TRACKS" (TMNT)

"Krang, the Foot Soldiers are revolting!"
"You're telling me!"

Preamble:  When Shredder stole the leadership of the ninja Foot Clan from Hamato Yoshi, he replaced its original human members with robotic ninja warriors called Foot Soldiers.  The design and sculpt of the original Foot Soldier action figure resembles the cartoon incarnation pretty closely, but the color scheme is considerably different.  Playmates Toys used the same blue-and-purple color ensemble for most of the Foot Clan characters and vehicles (including Shredder), but this idea never really translated over to the animated cartoon.  The Foot Soldier was one of the duplicate figures I got in an eBay lot, so I decided to repaint it into the cartoon color scheme.

Construction:  Back in the day, I discovered that the head and arms on the Foot Soldier are detachable (the arms are mounted on the same types of ball joints as the legs on most of the other TMNT figures), so I popped them off to make painting the figure a little easier.  I deliberately went with flat colors instead of glossy ones; somehow I just couldn't justify making a shiny ninja.  I painted the shirt, sleeves, and boots black, while the hood, belt, and pants became  a shade of purple that was closer to how the Foot Soldiers actually looked in the cartoon.  (When I originally finished this project, I'd painted the arm guards silver, but I really should go back and repaint them grey to try to more closely match the Foot Soldier's appearance in animation.)  The Foot Soldiers had red-colored Foot Clan insignias on their hoods during the first season of the cartoon, but the symbol changed to yellow for subsequent seasons, so I went with the updated look.

The Foot Soldiers are also supposed to have a ninja star tucked behind their belts, according to the cartoon model, but I didn't bother with that since I had intended this project to be a strict repaint.  (I suppose I could always fashion a cloth belt for the figure if I ever run across the right color material.)

Comments:  There are lots of differently-colored Foot Soldiers in the Konami video games (I'm thinking mainly here of TMNT II: The Arcade Game for NES), and I've toyed around with the idea of doing repaints to represent some of these guys.  They would have to be digital repaints, though, since I don't have nearly enough Foot Soldiers toys to represent all the different iterations that exist!